Lemony vinaigrette & fennel/celery salad [dria.org]
Whipped this up last night for a fennel & celery salad (pretty much my favourite salad).
Ingredients
Directions are simple: put everything into a bowl, bottle, or jar and whisk or shake to combine.
The fennel & celery salad is insanely simple:
Toss these with the vinaigrette. Ta dah.
Straightforward polenta with a bit of added cheese. This is not a low fat recipe, by any stretch of the imagination.
Ingredients
Directions
Insanely yummy short rib recipe [dria.org]
It’s not mine, I just made it exactly according to the recipe which lives over here on Robert Love’s website: Okinawan-style braised beef short ribs. Seriously, I wouldn’t change a thing. Eat them.
A few weeks ago, dria blogged about the format she had adopted for conducting 1-on-1 meetings with her manager. As a nascent manager myself, I had been struggling to come up with a better framework for my own meetings. I ran dria’s chosen format by Armen and he was supportive, so for the past two weeks we’ve been giving it a try.
The new meeting format is working pretty well for us so far. Here are some of the key things I like about it:
Our success with the format has encouraged me to push the format back up the chain: John and I are going to try the format next week for our 1-on-1.
Better than adblocking [dria.org]
Just jumping on the adblocking yea/nay blogging train: I don’t block ads. I could but I don’t bother. Most of the time they don’t bother me unless I’m trying to read a long article, at which point I use Readability, which is infinitely better than an adblocker for that situation.
Note: Readability runs fine on Minefield if you use Nightly Tester Tools to force-install. There’s also a bookmarklet version if you don’t want to install an add-on.
Candidate Declaration [JOSHMEANS.COM]
March 5, 2010
| To: |
Ramshaw Real Estate |
| From: |
Josh Means |
| Re: |
Candidate Declaration |
Residents of Cobblefield Point:
This letter states my intention to run for a position on the Cobblefield Point Homeowners’ Association Board.
During my first year as a member of the Board we helped correct a significant budget shortage. While some decisions were difficult and did not make everyone happy, all decisions was made with the entire Association in mind. We have attempted to provide Cobblefield Point residents with a unified direction and strong voice. The budget shortage we corrected has now turned into a small surplus, with continued oversight of expenditures and careful planning of services, I believe we can further increase the capital reserve of our Association. This will better prepare us for the challenges that lay ahead.
As I stated last year, I am proud of the condo I own and I believe we all stand to benefit from having a complex we can enjoy and be proud to call our home.
I hope that each and every resident understand the sense of responsibility they have and will join the Board with helping to make our community a better place.
Thank you,
Josh Means
cc: http://joshmeans.com/?p=315
Quote of the Week [storm trippin']
While watching the Olympics this last weekend we tried the impress upon the kids the values of hard work, competition, team spirit, national pride, and the fun of sport.
G, to the kids: ".. And maybe someday maybe mommy and daddy will be at the Olympics watching you guys compete for a gold medal. Which sport do you think you'll play?"
Naveen, matter-of-factly: "whatever's the easiest"
Sigh, still much progress to be made in the "hard work" department...
Zdir (Tunisian tomato-chili soup) [dria.org]
Read this article in the Atlantic yesterday and decided to give it a try. The article doesn’t give a precise recipe, so I’ve deciphered it the best I can below (making a minor substitution and leaving out the semolina). I just made it. It’s really damned good.
I really have no idea whether this can be properly called “zdir” since I’ve been unable to locate an actual recipe (or any other information) about it. Either way, it’s crazy tasty with a good solid spicy punch. If you don’t care for spicy food, skip the harissa and chilis. If you do like spicy food, you have to try this.
This has been a pet peeve of mine for a while. Assuming you’re not editing the attachment as a comment, Bugzilla gives you a very small window in which to leave a comment when reviewing a patch: the textarea is 5 rows high and only 25 columns wide by default. I’ve found it hard to add coherent commentary in a box that small, and my efforts almost always come out poorly formatted because I just can’t tell how the text is wrapping.
I whipped up a dead-simple greasemonkey script today that increases the size of the comment box when you click on it, and then shrinks it back down again when you click elsewhere.
One of the most important parts of my week is my one-on-one (1:1) meeting with Dan, my manager. These meetings generally only last around half an hour, and it’s time extraordinarily well spent. In that half hour we catch up, discuss projects and status, review priorities, troubleshoot blockers, checkpoint against our quarterly goals, and use the time to give each other feedback. It might sound like a pretty dense 30 minutes, and that’s because it is. Our 1:1 meeting is a tightly packed conversation that establishes and reinforces my direction, priorities, and motivation. As a remotie*, I would be lost without it.
The actual meeting is only part of the story, however — while the meeting only lasts for half an hour, I do some prep work the day before. This prep work mostly involves reviewing my projects and goals, writing out what I want to talk about, and sending those notes to Dan so he can review them before we meet. I find this process extremely useful.
Over the months I’ve established a more-or-less standard format for my 1:1 prep notes that includes five fairly straightforward sections:
Accomplishments & status: This is where I do a quick rundown of my current projects, with one or two sentences covering what I’ve managed to get done in the last week and what the current status looks like.
Blocked/Waiting on: This is where I list the projects I’m stuck on and why, or other things that are blocking progress — either waiting on resources, people, feedback, or whatever else. Having this section is absolutely vital — if I’m blocked on something, we can usually talk it through so I get unstuck, or Dan can figure out what he can do to help.
To do over the next week: By writing out a short list of specific things I plan to work on over the next week, Dan and I can make sure that I’m working on the right things and am prioritizing things properly. This doesn’t take a lot of time to go over, and since we checkpoint on this every week there usually aren’t any changes, but sometimes my task list gets rejigged slightly if other things have come up elsewhere in the organization.
Areas to develop: Usually this is a one or two sentence “big picture” sort of thing. Dan and I talk about longer-term career development once every month or two, discussing what I need to do or develop in order to progress, become more effective, and have more impact. In this part of my prep notes I take a few minutes to review how I think I’m doing in relation to what we discussed and jot down what I believe I need to focus on improving the most.
This section gives Dan a chance to do some career development coaching. While we normally deal with this part of the meeting in a matter of minutes, it’s profoundly useful — this is an incredibly quick and easy way for me to get ongoing lightweight feedback from Dan on a regular basis.
Quarterly goal tracking: We establish a set of goals each quarter, and every week Dan and I review progress on the ones I own and am driving. I find this useful because regularly checkpointing against my goals helps me make sure I’m focusing on the right things. By reviewing these weekly, we can also make ongoing course corrections where needed. Life rarely happens exactly according to plan, and priorities and projects can shift. It’s far better to review and adjust things weekly than to do a single review late in the quarter just to realize that things got off track (at which point the panic sets in).
Video chat: Another thing I should mention is that Dan and I have our meetings using Skype video. We used to just use the phone, but Dan talked me into using video chat and it’s really much, much better. As a remotie, being able to get “face time” like this is way more important than I thought — not only is the communication much higher bandwidth, there’s a psychological impact I can’t really explain. I just feel more connected to the rest of the company, which is both surprising and fantastic. If you’re remote, you should really try using video chat for your 1:1 meetings…I can almost guarantee that it’s more useful than you expect.
And that’s about it. Having developed the habit of prepping for my 1:1 meetings this way, it only takes me about 15-20 minutes to write up my notes to send to Dan, and it makes our meetings incredibly focused and useful. If you’re not sure you’re getting the most out of your 1:1s, you might try something like this — a half hour of prep work on your part for a half hour meeting can have a huge impact.
Do you have particularly awesome 1:1 meetings? What makes them awesome? What tips would you give to people who would like their meetings to be more useful?
Soba noodle salad with grilled tofu [dria.org]
Dinner this evening, sticking with the “meatless” theme, is a very simple soba noodle salad topped with grilled tofu.
Grilled Tofu
Soba noodle salad
Very tasty and very filling. This is what I made for one (me) and I couldn’t finish it.
Why I love Readability, with screenshots [dria.org]
Readability is a Firefox add-on that improves the experience of reading long articles in your browser by getting all the extraneous cruft out of the way. I use it every single day and love it to bits.
Here, for example, is a screenshot of what a typical Harvard Business Review article looks like in Firefox (Persona: Save the Bees Plz by monorail cat):
With the Readability add-on installed, all I have to do is hit a quick keyboard shortcut (alt-cmd-R) and the page will reload and be reformatted by Readability. It looks like this:
It’s just so, so much better. arc90, you have made a great thing. Thanks :)
gold medal poker [Talk Without Speaking]
Despite all the amazing activity buzzing around town (oh wait, or is that the sound of helicopters instead?) Suz and I got together with the poker gang and tried to do our part to take the friday night poker championship which has, so far, eluded us. It wasn’t to be however but we all had a great time with Olympic gold being won in front of us, yummy pizza and fun poker.
Took advantage of the intervelometer on the new d300s for some a fun poker video! Enjoy.
Dawn around here is loud.
I cheated. I came to Hawaii even though I’m not quite done this thesis. I seriously weighed whether to finish the all-nighter I had started on Sunday and just get something done, but in the end, I think sanity reigned.
I mean, srsly. If I have to spend a day typing on the Lanai, so be it.
So here I sit. Green Lawn. Ocean.
Okay, maybe I’ll go for a snorkel—then thesis.
Sort of made this up as I went. Serves four or so? We have leftovers.
Ingredients
Method
Tylenol Cold & Flu meds got me on my feet long enough to get to the grocery store (Rob’s away, else he would have gone). Figured I’d pick up enough food for the better part of 2 weeks. Unsurprisingly, it’s cheaper to eat like this. Froze the bacon we already had on hand, which was hard. Oh bacon, I’m gonna miss you the most.
Here’s a list of what I bought because I’m bored and cranked on cold meds.
Fruit
Fresh vegetables
Dairy (and whatnot)
Everything else
Already on hand…
This is gonna be awesome.
I just went back through my archives, adding a “Meatless” category to the meatless recipes I’ve already posted. They’re not all mains, but here’s the list:
An experiment in meatlessness [dria.org]

Picture by karimian.
I’ve decided that I’m going to try an experiment in going without meat for the next two weeks. I say “without meat” rather than “vegetarian” because there are shades of grey in the world of vegetarianism, and I fully intend to cook with animal products such as eggs, milk, cheese, and butter. Just no beef, pork, fish, chicken, shrimp, etc.
The reason for this is simple. We’ve been working on eating less meat on average for the past couple of years, but we still eat more than we should. To eat less, we need to expand our repertoire of recipes for meatless mains. We have the cookbooks, we just need to use them and try more new things.
Two weeks gives me a chance to try around 10-15 new recipes. More if I get inspired and energetic, but probably not because I’ve got a cold and “inspired” is just about the last thing I feel right now. I’ll probably start with some sort of vegetarian stew or chili and go from there. If I remember, I’ll take pictures and blog it all.
If there are particular meatless recipes you think I should try, leave a comment!
Yeah, I’m late, but I might as well type up this list before we’re much further into 2010. It seemed like kind of a dull year for music. I did a lot of back-filling which should make for an even more compelling Best of the Oughts if I can ever get around to writing that. There was a lot of music that I liked in the last ten years.
So, here we have it:
I actually had a hard time coming up with 10. If I were being honest, I’d probably drop Metric and Silversun Pickups out of this list. “Fantasies” didn’t have any stand-out killer tracks on it, though it was probably a more consistent album than any of their previous ones. “Swoon” was similar, lacking anything truly earth-shattering, though “The Royal We” and “Panic Switch” are solid tracks.
Notable albums that didn’t make the cut: The xx, xx. That album was pretty over-hyped and gets tired fast. Tegan & Sara’s “Sainthood” (despite a couple of excellent tracks), and the already boring Phoenix’ “Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix”. If you’re gonna sell your songs to car manufacturers, at least wait a few months for me to get tired of your music first. Still catchy though.
It occurs to me that I’m spending more time talking about the music I liked less than the albums I listed above. If I had to buy just three of them, I’d probably pick Atlas Sound, Bat for Lashes and Grizzly Bear. But I couldn’t buy just three because then I wouldn’t have Handsome Furs’ excellent minimal electro-rocker “Face Control”. And Fever Ray is truly strange and excellent.
Did I miss any? Leave me a note if you think I’m missing out on anything 2009 had to offer. Happy listening.
Currently listening to All We Want, Baby, Is Everything by Handsome Furs from the album Face Control
Tết in Thailand [storm trippin']

Chúc Mừng Năm Mới to everyone! Happy belated Lunar New Year and may the year of the metal tiger be a happily memorable year for you.
This year we took off to Thailand for the Tet holiday. We decided to try a vacation in Pattaya this year. As a beach vacation goes, it was not as good as our previous beach vacations in Phuket or Bali, but, hey we still had fun. Pattaya's advantage is that it is only a 1.5 hour drive from Bangkok on the toll highway. And if you're an old white man looking for younger Thai women, or older white man looking for younger Thai men, and looking for a party town, then Pattaya is a good place to check out.
We stayed a few days at the Rabbit Resort and a few days at the Birds & Bees resort, both very family-friendly resorts. The Rabbit Resort is a very good value for the money and has a better breakfast than the Birds & Bees in my opinion. The Birds & Bees resort is more expensive than the Rabbit, but overall scored higher than Rabbit for us. The B&B; Resort is entertaining in many ways: the kid's pool has slides & water sprinklers, a vegetable garden and fruit tree farm to explore, Mozart-listening hens laying eggs, rabbits hopping around the grounds, fish to feed, bicycle stations that power water sprinklers & speakers looping through various national anthems, and of course the mannequins plastered in condoms and contraceptive pills. And profits go to support Population and Community Development Association a non-governmental charitable organization.
We did make it away from the beach and pool to take an elephant ride. Here again the Pattaya experience did not measure up to previous elephant rides in Phuket and Luang Prabang. Riding along the fringe of suburbia is not as enjoyable as riding through jungle. And the elephant ride business did not have any displays or briefing on where the elephants came from, or the current state of elephants in Thailand or what the future may hold for the beasts.
A few days in the sun and warmth of Thailand watching the kids enjoy the beach and pool, then back to the relative chill and cloud of Hanoi. We arrived back mid-week and Hanoi was still very much in the quiet of Tet, such a contrast to the pre-Tet chaos and mayhem when everyone shopped, shopped and shopped. We had such a pleasant time walking along the quiet streets, not having to avoid swerving motorbikes or listen to incessant honking or shake our heads as headstrong impatient drivers knotted themselves into another traffic lockup. A few short days of quiet and now the city has returned to its bustle and vigour.
Vacation over.
Jamie and David got screwed.
Let me admit, I’m not exactly a huge figure skating fan (far, far from it), but once again, the crowd says “perfect.” The commentators say “perfect,” and the judges say “I liked the fallin’ down Russians instead.”
Call me a worthless idealist, but the Olympic picture I’ve always carried around in my head is one of athletic prowess. Slice the field up into a bunch of events, and whoever is the best in any given one gets a shiny medal. Sure, this depends on somebody’s definition of best, but that can’t be too hard to come up with, can it? We’re talking athleticism. It’s quantitative. First one over the line wins.
Yeah. I’m funny.
The Olympics, of course, have little to do with athletic prowess. Perhaps when everyone still competed naked things were different, but now it’s an entertainment product, just like all the other pro sports that I used to like. (Come to think of it, competing naked is a pretty appealing marketing plan. I’m sure one of the new cable channels will latch onto that one in the near future.)
An entertainment product has to have crowd appeal, and though first one across the line works for me, it’s obviously not enough for his royal-majesty-highness-right-honorable-big-studmuffin IOC Chair, or whatever he’s making people call him these days. Crowd appeal requires judged events, it is said, so judged events we get.
Consider the ski jump, of all things. If ever there was an opportunity for an event to be based on good-old quantitative results, I would have figured the ski jump was it. Ski down hill. Jump off cliff. Measure distance at impact zone. Clean up bloody mess if required.
Of course, it isn’t quantitative. That’s not entertaining enough.
In the K-90, you have style points. The style points, it would seem, are based on comparing your form with the ideal ski jumping form. The ideal form, of course, is the form which—in theory—would cause the ski jumper to jump the farthest. If this was true, then the person with the best style should fly the farthest, and win the event.
But, as I watched the K-90 gold medalist miss the silver medalist’s mark by four metres, the irony began to beat its way into my head. When my grade 10 gym teacher told me that there were no points for second place, he wasn’t being entirely truthful. There are, and they’re called style points.
And when the Russians won the figure skating gold, well, I just had to laugh. Apparently all five people in the world who thought it was a better performance were on that judging panel. Way to go, folks. You’ve brought some real class to the sport.
The only thing funnier is going to be when his-royal-whatchamacallit IOC Chair declares these games, the judging-scandal-wrought, bribe-the-hosting-panel games, the “best games ever.” Best by who’s measure?
I bet it’s the figure skating judges that decide.
| Feed | RSS | Last fetched | Next fetched after |
|---|---|---|---|
| a crick in the net | XML | 15:30, Monday, 15 March | 18:30, Monday, 15 March |
| A Tale Never Loses in the Telling | XML | 15:30, Monday, 15 March | 18:30, Monday, 15 March |
| bluheeler | XML | 15:30, Monday, 15 March | 18:30, Monday, 15 March |
| Coop | XML | 15:30, Monday, 15 March | 18:30, Monday, 15 March |
| dria.org | XML | 15:30, Monday, 15 March | 18:30, Monday, 15 March |
| JOSHMEANS.COM | XML | 15:30, Monday, 15 March | 18:30, Monday, 15 March |
| Karen | XML | 15:30, Monday, 15 March | 18:30, Monday, 15 March |
| kev | XML | 15:30, Monday, 15 March | 18:30, Monday, 15 March |
| Life in Kjell | XML | 15:30, Monday, 15 March | 18:30, Monday, 15 March |
| n3wblog | XML | 15:30, Monday, 15 March | 18:30, Monday, 15 March |
| nareg | XML | 15:30, Monday, 15 March | 18:30, Monday, 15 March |
| pintday.org | XML | 23:30, Sunday, 14 March | 23:30, Monday, 15 March |
| storm trippin' | XML | 12:00, Monday, 15 March | 20:00, Monday, 15 March |
| Talk Without Speaking | XML | 15:30, Monday, 15 March | 18:30, Monday, 15 March |
| this is february | XML | 15:30, Monday, 15 March | 18:30, Monday, 15 March |
| zjlw | XML | 15:30, Monday, 15 March | 18:30, Monday, 15 March |